Church prepares for final service in Englewood

Bob Ryder, president of the Presbytery of the Palisades, inside the West Side Presbyterian Church in Englewood, which has closed.

ENGLEWOOD — At its peak, the congregation of West Side Presbyterian Church resembled the United Nations, a "crazy, wild mix of people" who gathered weekly to pray and sing in the picturesque stone chapel on West Demarest Avenue.

But when the congregation dwindled to just a handful this year, the 117-year church quietly closed. It has sat in solemn silence for the past 20 Sundays.

Church leaders wanted West Side Presbyterian to have a proper send-off, so they're holding one final service Sunday to celebrate the congregation's history as not only a house of worship, but also a dynamic force of social progress in Englewood.

"It's going to be a good farewell," said Bob Ryder, president of board of trustees for the Presbytery of the Palisades, which oversees nearly 50 Presbyterian churches in North Jersey.

West Side's closure is part of a national demographic shift away from mainline Protestant churches. Suburban communities such as Englewood, where Protestants were once the dominant group, have seen an influx of Hispanics, who are more likely to be Catholic, Asian immigrants, who belong to different faiths, and Orthodox Jewish families.

Another factor is that an increasing percentage of people are not joining any church. About one-fifth of Americans and one-third of those under 30 are religiously unaffiliated, according to a 2012 study by the Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project.

In the Presbyterian denomination alone, 86 churches disbanded last year after national membership dropped by more than 100,000 from 2011 to 2012, according to Presbyterian Church USA. The Presbytery of the Palisades has closed five churches in the past 10 years, including two in Hackensack and one each in Garfield and Edgewater, Ryder said.

Korean, Japanese and Seventh-Day Adventist churches have approached Presbyterian church leaders about buying the building, Ryder said. The 1.8-acre property, which includes a parking lot and a parsonage, is assessed at $2.2 million, he said.

West Side is one of three Presbyterian churches in Englewood. It never had a large congregation, topping out at about 150 members, church leaders said. It began as West Side Union Chapel in 1896 on the corner of Palisade Avenue and William Street, where Bethany Presbyterian now stands.

As more people moved to Englewood's west side, the congregation built a larger church at the corner of Demarest Avenue and Knickerbocker Road in 1926.

Diverse congregation

West Side had about 150 members when the Rev. Bruce Baker became pastor in 1982. He described the church during his 15-year tenure as "a really exciting place" that reflected the diversity of Englewood.

"There were 15 nations of birth represented in the congregation — Germany, Hungary, Scotland, El Salvador, Colombia, China, India, Pakistan, Cameroon — there was just this crazy, wild mix of people," he said.

During Baker's tenure, the church took an activist role in the community. With the church's support, the Center for Food Action moved out of West Side's basement into its own free-standing structure on church property in 1993.

Patricia Espy, executive director for the Center for Food Action, said she hopes the new owners will continue the tradition of support that the Presbyterian church has given the food pantry since its inception.

"It is the end of an era," she said. "It is very sad."

West Side also opened a thrift shop, which is now closed, to help low-income residents, but continues to lease space to the Ability School, a private school for children ages 3 to 13, and to a day-care center for teenage mothers that the church founded in 1985.

The day-care center expanded into the West Side Infant and Teen Parent Program, a full-service organization that teaches teen parents life skills and helps them enter college or obtain vocational training.

Darlene Serrano, the executive director, said the program is on a month-to-month lease but wants to stay in the only home it's ever known.

"We hope the new church allows us to stay," she said. "It's an ideal location and is such a vibrant part of the community," she said.